Premature Action: Ragemoor #1 Review

Ragemoor is an ambitious book that tries to capture the feeling of a classic haunted house tale mated with an H. P. Lovecraft feeling of cosmic dread, jacked off over by a morality tale from an EC Comics book. However, in trying to introduce several characters, 3,000 years of history (evil history!) and deliver a concrete payoff, all in 24 pages, it trades dread and suspense one expects from a haunted house / elder gods story in favor of quickie violence, making the whole thing feel less like The Colour Out Of Space than Jason X. It is a misfire, but thanks to Richard Corben’s art, it is a good-looking misfire.

We are introduced to Herbert, the current owner of Ragemoor Castle who declares the property to be evil down to its core because he sometimes becomes lost in its halls, and because he believes that it has caused his father Machlan to go insane because Machlan dances around naked and pisses in hallways. Which makes Ragemoor sound less like a haunted house than it does every college dormitory in America. These are signs of substance abuse, not insanity, to which my current writing of this outside of a straitjacket will testify. But I digress.

Herbert relays the story of a building born from suffering, watered by the blood of human sacrifice and literally able to erupt from the Earth of its own free and implacable evil will. Which is pretty par for the course as stories like this go; you rarely get a story about a haunted house built competently by professional contractors on time and under budget, unless you count pipes that freeze every fucking winter as haunting, which I do but that’s beside the point. The point is that this kind of setup is standard for an effective haunted house story; it gives a concrete reason for why supernatural events begin slowly occurring, leading to rising tension and eventual payoff. The problem here is that someone apparently forgot to tell writer Jan Strnad about that whole “slowly occurring” and “rising tension” thing.

Because where this story falls down is establishing any real suspense. Pretty much as soon as the lights go out, the haunting starts. And not creepy “bump in the night” stuff, but straight to the “end of Poltergeist act two where a tree rips someone out the window” stuff. By which I mean that’s exactly what happens the second the lights go out. Part of any effective haunting story is the rising action where the characters wonder what’s going on and if it’s actually supernatural or not. It think it’s less effective when the story not only verifies that bad shit’s happening right out of the gate, but does it with a scene from one of the most famous haunted house movies ever made. It takes away from the story; the the only unanswered question is what other haunted house flicks the writer’s seen.

So the story has some problems with it, but the art isn’t one of them. Richard Corben’s art is frankly spectacular. His style remains distinctive; if you’ve ever read any classic Heavy Metal, you’ll recognize it in a second… no? Nothing? Well, how about the cover to Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell? Fine, go with that then. Plebe. Anyhoo, this stuff has strong use of blacks and shadows, clear storytelling, and just killer facial expressions – some of these characters are seriously and morally repugnant, and Corben depicts that grotesqery right on their mugs. If Strnad is trying to reference old horror movies and only doing okay with it, Corben sells the look of those flicks 100% with the visuals. This art is bafflingly good.

While I suppose that, since this is the first issue of a four-issue miniseries, cutting straight to the chase with the explosive supernatural violence could be an indicator that things will ratchet up even further in the coming issues. But within the scope of this issue, it feels rushed and somewhat derivative – seriously, pulling the tree attack scene from Poltergeist was a serious misstep in my eyes; it makes me wonder if we’re gonna see evil twins in a hallway or a dead skank in a bathtub or Devine eating some dogshit… wait; one of those isn’t right, but whatever.

The point is that the story’s problematic, but it has room to improve… and even if it didn’t, it’s still some killer eye candy. You saw Transformers: Dark of The Moon for shittier reasons, so consider giving it a shot. In a worst-case scenario, you’ve got an even chance of seeing an evil clown doll go apeshit in a month.